Page 73 - Constructing Craft

By the 1980s it was clear that many craftspeople in New Zealand were making ‘art’

rather than ‘craft’. Craft leaders even sought to reassure craftspeople who were
concerned about this trend. Bob Heatherbell, the Vice-President of the New

Zealand Society of Potters (NZSP), wrote in 1986: ‘Potters whose only interest is
domestic ware may be suspicious of this flirtation with the arts but they can rest

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assured that they are far from forgotten.’ Heatherbell’s reassurance however,
hinted that craftspeople were divided. Increasingly, the ‘craft’ for sale in shops or on

display in art galleries and museums did not appear to serve the traditional roles of

craft. Some commentators described this shift in emphasis as the ‘ethic of freedom
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from function’. The Australian craft writer, Grace Cochrane, recognised this trend
as a paradigm shift for the crafts.

Following the lead of the visual artists of the time, ...
[craftspeople] denied many of the previously agreed central
ideals of crafts practice: valuing skill in the use of hands and
tools, taking pleasure in working with materials, seeing the
validity of function as a purpose for production and
acknowledging the legitimacy of working for a client.... In doing
so, while certainly changing and overturning conservative
perceptions about what the crafts might be, they set in train the
beginnings of a denial of their own social and technological
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histories and values.

Cochrane was acknowledging that craftspeople had conceded that their craft had to

embrace the attributes that identified it as art using conventional art terminology.
Defining and restraining craft became a persistent source of conflict both within the

movement and from sources outside. The position taken was often linked to the

place that the protagonists occupied within the art/craft field and to wider social,
political, cultural and economic concerns. Craftspeople relied on ‘outsiders’ to define

craft. This remained a persistent problem for a movement that lacked a legitimating

authority.

Aesthetic and Technical Distinctions

Earlier Ideas about Art and Craft

As more craftspeople began to call themselves craft artists and more students

entered the new craft design programmes that began in the 1980s the differences

between art and craft, as defined by philosophers and scholars, began to become

Constructing Craft